


Two Sons of Redstone

by sprucewoodcottage (ironmermaidens)



Category: Hermitcraft
Genre: Crossover/Fusion, Eye Trauma, Gen, Hermitcraft season 6, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redstoner AU, reaper au, the red sun never sets au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21538588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironmermaidens/pseuds/sprucewoodcottage
Summary: Mumbo receives a visitor in his obsidian prison, and the two talk about the red sun world and the way that it has effected them both.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 88





	Two Sons of Redstone

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Red Sun Never Sets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18122372) by [ThaneZain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThaneZain/pseuds/ThaneZain). 



> This story is a crossover/fusion between the Reaper AU (set Post-3:47PM) and The Red Sun Never Sets by ThaneZain, and as such contains many of the same themes and content warnings you may expect from both the Reaper AU and the Redstoner AU. In particular there is a scene involving graphic eye trauma that may be triggering or squicky to some readers. Please use discretion when reading.

Mumbo sits on the bed of his obsidian box, knees drawn up to his chest, and stares into the red eyes of his doppelgänger. The red eyed Mumbo stares back. He looks uncomfortable, which Mumbo finds ironic. The other man’s presence is certainly making _him_ uncomfortable. He tries not to think about what his crimson irises resemble.  
  
The red eyed Mumbo finally looks away. “I just thought I’d… y’know… see how you were doing. See if… well…”  
  
“See if I was still crazy?” Mumbo suggests dryly.  
  
“ _Well_ …” The other Mumbo says, grimacing. “I wouldn’t have worded it like that, but… _yes_.”  
  
Mumbo hums, pretends to look thoughtful for a moment. “Hm, yeah. Yeah, last I checked, still crazy.”  
  
The other Mumbo fidgets. “…I’m sorry.”  
  
Mumbo blinks. He’s not sure what to say to that. He’s not even sure what the other Mumbo is sorry for.  
  
“…It’s not your fault,” Mumbo says.  
  
A look of guilt flashes across the other Mumbo’s face. “Suppose it’s not, is it?”  
  
“It isn’t,” Mumbo insists, even as he feels less sure of the assertion. “Why would it be?”  
  
“It’s just,” The other Mumbo starts, then pulls at the knot of his tie. He sighs. “It’s just… it could have been either one of us, couldn’t it? I could have ended up there just as easily as you, don’t you think?”  
  
Mumbo feels all goodwill towards his doppelgänger drain in an instant. “Well it wasn’t either one of us, was it? It was me.”  
  
“You’re right,” The red eyed Mumbo says quietly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it about me.”  
  
“It’s fine,” Mumbo sighs, shoulders sagging. He doesn’t want to alienate one of the only people who isn’t afraid to visit him. The red eyed Mumbo doesn’t say anything, just stares down at his suit pants, picking at imaginary lint. It’s a nervous tick that Mumbo knows well—it’s his own, after all.  
  
Mumbo tugs at his own collar, digs his fingers into the knee of his pants. He’s surprised the other Mumbo hasn’t left him already, if he’s being honest. He knows if their positions were reversed he would have.  
  
Of course, maybe that was just a side effect of his _condition_. He had a lot of time to contemplate things these days, and his _condition_ was no exception to the places his mind often wandered.  
  
“…Probably wouldn’t have gone so wrong if it _was_ you, though,” he mumbles.  
  
“What?” The red eyed Mumbo squeaks. “What makes you think that?”  
  
He regrets saying that. This is hardly the conversation he wants to have right now with anyone, let alone another Mumbo. A better Mumbo.  
  
Mumbo clenches his teeth. “Well it’s because you’ve got a soul and all, I reckon.”  
  
“Why would _that_ matter?!” The other Mumbo exclaims. He sounds genuinely perplexed by the suggestion.  
  
“Why _wouldn’t_ it matter?” Mumbo fires back. “You must have heard about the things I did there, in that world! What kind of monster does those things?”  
  
The red eyed Mumbo opens his mouth to argue, but Mumbo doesn’t give him a chance.  
  
“I don’t have a soul, for heaven’s sake!” he shouts. “Because _you_ took it when you died! Because… _stupid_ Grian made me come back. And look at where I ended up! If I had a soul… if I had a soul I could have resisted it. But instead I…”  
  
“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” the other Mumbo says. “Having a soul doesn’t define your worth. Look at Xisuma!”  
  
“I’m not Xisuma,” Mumbo says.  
  
“Neither am I,” the other Mumbo responds. He takes a deep breath and when he continues, it’s barely above a whisper. “…I’m not as good as you think I am.”  
  
Mumbo isn’t sure how to respond. What could the other Mumbo have done that could possibly compare to what he himself has done? His red eyed doppelgänger takes a deep breath.  
  
“I… found you,” the other Mumbo says, and Mumbo feels his chest constrict. “I found you before anyone else. I figured out how to get to that world first, and I found you.”  
  
“…How…?” Mumbo asks.  
  
“I don’t… remember how I figured it out,” the other Mumbo continues. “I overheard Grian and Iskall and something just… clicked.”  
  
He pauses, takes another breath. Picks at his pants for a moment. “I knew you were there and I left you.  
  
“Part of me… was even happy you were there. I didn’t want you to come back.” The other Mumbo sniffs and wipes at his eyes. “I thought I could have my friends back with you gone.”  
  
Mumbo is silent.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” The other Mumbo chokes out. “I’m so sorry I did that to you, Mumbo… I could have saved you and I didn’t…”  
  
Mumbo wants to say something. No, scratch that, he wants to scream something. He wants to scream at the red eyed Mumbo. He wants to scream that he took everything back, that this was his fault, that he deserved his guilt. That he deserved to be the one stuck in the red sun’s world. He clenches his hands into fists so tightly it hurts. His fingernails are cutting into his palms, he thinks distantly.  
  
“I killed… Grian and Iskall,” he says past gritted teeth. “I _killed_ them. And you mean to tell me… that you could have stopped it?”  
  
“I’m sorry,” the other Mumbo whispers. His fingers are tangled in his hair, and somehow the vulnerability of it makes Mumbo all the angrier. He leaps to his feet.  
  
“You left me there to rot! All because you were jealous?!” Mumbo’s hands are shaking now, and the other Mumbo is shaking too. “It _should_ have been you! _You_ should have been the one stuck in that godforsaken place! Nobody would have missed you! I could have a normal life right now and you took that away from me!”  
  
He regrets the words as soon as they’ve left his mouth. The red eyed Mumbo already has tear tracks running down his cheeks, and now he’s hiccuping with barely contained sobs. Mumbo feels so guilty, and he feels angry that he feels guilty, and guilty that he’s angry. He takes a hesitant step forward, and then another, until he’s crossed his prison and sitting down beside the other Mumbo. He thinks the other Mumbo must not have noticed, because he doesn’t react.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”  
  
“You’re right,” the other Mumbo says miserably. “Nobody _would_ have missed me…”  
  
Mumbo feels a sharp sting in his heart at the very thought. The other hermits distrusted the other Mumbo, he knew. Without his friends… he would have been left forever in that horrible place. Mumbo feels sickened by the very notion.  
  
“You don’t deserve that,” he says, and is surprised to find he means it. Once again he thinks on what he would do if their positions were reversed. If he was an outsider in his own community and had what seemed like the opportunity to be accepted again. Would he forsake one person—one who seemingly stole his life from him—to have that? Of course he would. How could he possibly blame the other Mumbo for doing what he himself would do?  
  
“You don’t mean that,” The red eyed Mumbo says.  
  
“I do. Really.” he responds.  
  
The other Mumbo is silent and picking at his pants again. Mumbo thinks he must disagree still, and simply doesn’t want to argue with him anymore. Mumbo picks at his own.  
  
“…I still think you would have handled it better than I did. If it had been you.” He says after a moment.  
  
The other Mumbo snorts out a sad little laugh. “No, I don’t think so.”  
  
“What makes you so sure?” he asks.  
  
The other Mumbo worries his lip. “I wasn’t… _there_ very long, but… Well, I felt it. The… Red Sun. As soon as I stepped through that portal, I felt it. My pockets were full of redstone. I saw what you built and my first thought was… I could do it better.”  
  
Mumbo doesn’t know how to respond. It doesn’t make him feel any better to hear the other Mumbo say it, to know that no matter which of them had been plucked up by fate it would have ended the same way.  
  
“…I did intend to save you,” The red eyed Mumbo says after the silence has worn on too long. “When I first went there. I wanted to be the one to save the day. But when I felt that… _thing’s_ influence in my brain… I got scared. I ran away.”  
  
Mumbo finds himself putting a comforting hand on his doppelgänger’s shoulder. He flinches when the other Mumbo’s red eyes flicker to meet his. The other Mumbo’s gaze drops again in an instant. He mumbles an apology.  
  
Mumbo squeezes his shoulder reassuringly, then drops his hand back to his lap. The other Mumbo’s confession, for some reason, made him feel more at ease. As much as he appreciated Grian and Iskall’s efforts, there were some things they just couldn’t understand. Things they wouldn’t understand. Perhaps, he thinks, the other Mumbo might.  
  
“…Sometimes I… I wish I could go back,” Mumbo admits after a moment.  
  
The other Mumbo clenches his hands into fists and for a second Mumbo thinks he’s taken it too far. The other Mumbo would surely leave now, he’d leave and he’d never come back, he’d tell Grian and Iskall what he’d said and he’d never get out of this hell hole he’d be stuck here forever and he’d rot just as the other Mumbo had left him to rot in the world of the Red Sun that useless, backstabbing son of a—  
  
“I almost built the portal again,” The other Mumbo says, cutting through his thoughts like a knife. “Recently. And… And not so recently, too… I’m… I’m by myself, most of the time. Or all of the time, really… and sometimes I just… I _feel_ something… calling me. And it’s… it’s really hard to stop myself. When I’m alone like that. There’s not really… anything to stop me, except… me.”  
  
“Oh. You… know how to go there,” Mumbo says. He already knew that of course. The other Mumbo mentioned it earlier, he remembered, but at the time he’d been more focused on the other part of what he was saying. Mumbo breathes hard through his nose. Something in his tone must have been strange, because the other Mumbo is looking up at him again, head tilted questioningly. Mumbo swallows hard.  
  
“…Tell me how,” he says. The other Mumbo furrows his brow. He shakes his head slowly. Mumbo sees red. In the next instant Mumbo finds himself on top of his doppelgänger, pinning him to the floor of the obsidian box, fingers curled into his shirt. “Tell me!”  
  
“I won’t tell you!” The other Mumbo yelps, panic filling those red eyes as he stares pleadingly at Mumbo. Those eyes should be his, Mumbo thinks. He snarls and slams his doppelgänger’s head against the obsidian. The other Mumbo is too disoriented to fight back. Mumbo presses a hand into his doppelgänger’s forehead, holding him still, and with the other he begins to dig one of the other Mumbo’s eyes out of its socket. The other Mumbo screams. “Mumbo, _stop_ _!”_  
  
Mumbo presses his fingers harder into his doppelgänger’s eye socket, paying no heed to the fingers that were clawing at his own neck and face. The other Mumbo struggles to buck him off, kicking his legs and twisting his hips in a weak attempt to throw him aside and free himself. Mumbo continues to work his fingers around that eye, blood squelching up more and more the deeper he goes. The other Mumbo is still screaming. He abandons his assault on Mumbo’s face and grabs his wrists, trying to pry him off that way instead.  
  
He feels his arm collapse before he realizes that the other Mumbo has grabbed his elbow, pushing out against it and knocking him off balance. It’s all the distraction his doppelgänger needs to pull himself free, kneeing Mumbo in the sternum and winding him as he wiggles free. Mumbo doubles over and gasps for air, stars filling his vision for a moment as he struggles to fill his lungs.  
  
His senses return to him at the same time his vision does, and cold dread sweeps through him from head to toe. He glances down at his hand, red with blood, and is relieved to see that it’s empty. He slowly raises his eyes up to where he hears the other Mumbo’s panicked breathing and sees him sitting with his back in the corner, hands clutched over the eye he’d nearly ripped out. His face and hands and shirt have as much blood on them as Mumbo’s.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry. Oh my word…”  
  
The other Mumbo says nothing, just pulls in shaky breath after shaky breath. They’re both trying their damnedest to calm down after that episode. Mumbo doesn’t know what to do. He wants to fix this, but trapped in this obsidian box, he’s not sure he has any options to do so.  
  
“Is… Is there anything I can do?” he asks quietly. “Does it… hurt?”  
  
“Well it doesn’t bloody well feel _good!_ _”_ the other Mumbo shouts, his voice a higher pitch than usual, and Mumbo cringes. Of course it hurts. Stupid question.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I don’t know what came over me. I can’t believe…”  
  
He sighs before he can finish the sentence. Can’t believe what? That he would do something like that? Experience tells him that this is entirely within the realm of possibility for him these days.  
  
“Why did you do that?” The other Mumbo asks weakly.  
  
“I don’t know,” he responds automatically, but at this point it’s a little late for lying. He’s already confessed his darkest secret to the other Mumbo, and if his doppelgänger didn’t know how truly messed up he was from his time in the world of the red sun by now, then he was an even bigger spoon than himself. “Well I… I do know. I mean, I think I know.”  
  
The other Mumbo hesitantly opens his good eye and looks at him. Mumbo shifts his own gaze away as quickly as he can.  
  
“Your eyes,” he says. “They’re red. I don’t know if you knew that.”  
  
“So I’ve been told…” The other Mumbo says warily.  
  
“It’s just. Well. When you said that… you know,” Even thinking about what his doppelgänger had said makes his blood feel too warm. “When you said what you said, it…”  
  
He takes a deep breath. “I could feel the Red Sun… begging me to come back. Sometimes I really want nothing more than to go back to it. And your eyes… they look so much like it.”  
  
The other Mumbo laughs quietly, and Mumbo can’t help but cringe again. It’s not a very cheerful sound. “Suppose I should wear a blindfold next time I visit, then, just in case.”  
  
Mumbo balks. “You’re really thinking about coming back?”  
  
“Well… yeah,” The other Mumbo says, then quieter he adds, “It’s the least I can do.”  
  
“You don’t owe me anything,” Mumbo counters, turning his gaze back to meet the other Mumbo’s again. He almost flinches at the single, red eye that stares back. “This isn’t your fault.”  
  
“It’s not yours either,” The other Mumbo says. He doesn’t break eye contact as he does.  
  
“You don’t mean that,” he says. He knew some part of his friends, no matter how supportive of him they were, blamed him for the things he did. How could they not? He was still him, wasn’t he? That’s what they always told him. And if that was true, then he must be at least partially responsible for what happened in the redstone world.  
  
“I do mean it,” The other Mumbo says, and he sounds so sure of himself. “I was there too, remember? Maybe not as long as you, but I felt it. I felt the Red Sun, and I still feel it, and I still find myself trying to go back to it.”  
  
The other Mumbo laughs again, a little louder but no less broken sounding. “I’m probably the only person who understands what you’re feeling right now. And I can say with confidence that whatever exactly it is that happened there… It’s not your fault. You didn’t want to do that anymore than you wanted to do this.”  
  
He motions to the half of his face that’s still hidden behind his bloody hand, and Mumbo tries not to imagine what his eyeball looks like beneath it. Even despite the gruesome mental image, Mumbo finds himself smiling.  
  
“Thank you. Really. It… it means a lot to hear you say that…” he responded.  
  
The other Mumble chuckles, and this time it sounds real. “You can always count on me to know what to say to cheer you up.”  
  
Mumbo’s smile grows a fraction. “Yeah. Guess I could, couldn’t I?”

__

Mumbo is sitting near the recently installed window when he hears a knock at the door. He looks up as the door opens and his doppelgänger enters. Mumbo is relieved to see that his eye has healed to look as if nothing ever happened to it. The other Mumbo had assured him it would, but he had been skeptical, if only because of the way the lasting damage he had caused Grian and Iskall was imprinted into his mind.  
  
“Your eye looks better,” he greets.  
  
“I told you it would,” The other Mumbo returns. “When’d you get a window?”  
  
“Iskall installed it for me the other day. Isn’t it nice?” He says. The other Mumbo grins, and he’s pleased to find that it doesn’t look strained or uneasy.  
  
“Really nice.” He comes over to peek outside. “What a view.”  
  
It’s a joke, Mumbo knows, because he recognizes his own dry sarcasm in the other Mumbo’s voice, and also because the only thing he could see was blue sky—which was nicer than black obsidian, granted, but still not entirely exciting.  
  
The other Mumbo sits next to him by the window. “So… how’re you doing?”  
  
“I’ve been… better. I think.” He says.  
  
The other Mumbo hums. “Well… I suppose it’s better to think you’re better than to think you’re worse.”  
  
“Yeah… suppose you’re right.” He agrees.  
  
The other Mumbo smiles a bit. “Suppose so.”  
  
He can’t help a chuckle. “That was a pity laugh. Just so you know. Not genuine.”  
  
The other Mumbo laughs, and it’s just as fake as his own was, if not more. “I thought as much.”  
  
They’re both laughing now, fits of giggles turning their faces red and making their eyes water. Mumbo’s belly starts to hurt, but he’s happy, he’s really genuinely happy. The other Mumbo puts an arm around his shoulder and pulls him into a side hug as they both slowly catch their breath. He doesn’t know what tomorrow will be like, but at least for today, he’s okay.


End file.
